Washington University in St. Louis
Unmeasured, detached, and isolated: The legitimation of a domesticated identity
Abstract
dc:description.abstract<p>Unmeasured, detached and isolated explores the lingering effects of colonialism on identity, behavior, and cultural perception through the lens of my personal experience as a Venezuelan immigrant in the United States. I investigate how colonial legacies—especially those codified through manuals of etiquette like Manuel Antonio Carreño’s Manual de Urbanidad y Buenas Maneras—continue to shape self-perception and societal expectations. Through video, sculpture, miniatures, and installation, I reconstruct a visual language that resists simplification and reclaims complexity. Engaging with the symbolic weight of tropical imagery, domestic spaces, and hybrid aesthetics, my work challenges Eurocentric frameworks and examines the figure of the migrant as a socially constructed “stranger.” By foregrounding opacity, disorder, and play, the thesis text and artwork open space for alternative ways of knowing and being—seeking not to resolve identity but to hold its contradictions. The project becomes both a critique of inherited norms and a speculative proposal for cultural reimagining</p>
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Thesis
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Graduate School of Art
- Year dc:date.available
- 2025
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Agüero, Eva M
- Contributors dc:contributor
-
- Amy Hauft
- Monika Weiss
- Jose Garza
Subjects
dc:subject × 13Rights
- Language dc:language
- English
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Repository record dc:identifier
- https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_visual_art/36
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:mfa_visual_art-1040